“Is Wilton a friend of yours?”
“We are engaged,” said she.
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed.
I had heard that Mrs. Mullet had money, and she was good game for the neat Mr. Wilton. Now I could see his reason for letting us alone in Italy, where he was four thousand miles from danger. I saw, too, that I must take a course which would inevitably expose us to more trouble, for I could not permit this simple woman to be wronged.
“Don't give him the source of your information,” I said. “I want to speak kindly, and so I shall only say that he's a fugitive from justice. The name Wilton is assumed.”
Mrs. Mullet fell into a chair and seemed to find it hard work to breathe. Betsey put her smelling-salts under the lady's nose. She quickly regained her self-possession and rose and said, in a trembling voice:
“Thank you! I am going home.”
She left, and again we paid our compliments to the artist, who politely left his work to speak with us. He asked me for information regarding certain Americans who owed him for busts. An actress had had herself put, life-size and nude, into white marble, and after making her first payment was maintaining a discreet silence in some part of the world unknown to the artist.
“How coy!” Betsey exclaimed as she looked at the marble figure.
A Brooklyn woman and her two daughters had sat for busts and then had weakened on the general proposition and abandoned the country when they were half finished. I made haste to depart for fear that he might wish to engage me as collector for his bust factory.